Word Origin & History

placebo early 13c., name given to the rite of Vespers of the Office of the Dead, so called from the opening of the first antiphon, "I will please the Lord in the land of the living" (Psalm cxiv:9), from L. placebo "I shall please," future indic. of placere "to please" (see please). Medical sense is first recorded 1785, "a medicine given more to please than to benefit the patient."

Example Sentences for placebo

It is a milder form of this same method to give what the learned faculty term a placebo.

We'll call this the placebo criticism and will come back to it, too, in a moment.

We are interested in what makes the placebo act as effectively as the true medication.

With him Placebo justifies his assentation on the ground that lords are better informed than their inferiors.

This is a last phase of the metaphysical polity, and is only a kind of placebo.

The placebo effect has become increasingly interesting to psychological as well as medical researchers.

The dirage was concluded, and vespers for the dead were now commencing with the "Placebo Domino."